Should Bungie bring back SBMM? (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Sunday, June 28, 2020, 13:38 (1391 days ago) @ INSANEdrive

It's tricky. Generally speaking, I haven't had a great experience with Bungie's SBMM. I'm not opposed to it in theory, but it just never seems to work well in Destiny. It's become a bit of a running joke with some of the DBOers who I play with that as soon as I join their fireteam, all our matches are about to get extra sweaty because adding just 1 player with a relatively high PvP rank suddenly throws our team against entire teams of Unbroken or Flawless PvP gods. It makes me wonder if I'm about to ruin my friends' games for the rest of the evening if I join them (I know that might come across as arrogant, but I hope you all get my meaning... my PvP rank is a bit higher than most, and I tend to get ranked against super sweaty opponents on a regular basis, regardless of who my teammates are).

So there's the problem of implementation. But beyond that, I think it would make the most sense to offer some playlists that rely on SBMM, and others that are connection based. For one thing, having PvP players from across the entire skill range compete against each other some of the time would help build more accurate skill ratings which could then be used to improve those playlists that do use SBMM. So maybe it would be best to use SBMM in the playlists where it makes the most sense, and feature CBMM in other playlists.

I might suggest something like a 6v6 "grab bag" style playlist with a mix of gametypes in the hopper that runs on CBMM. Make this playlist geared towards groups of friends or randos who just want to jump in and have fun. I'd probably stick with CBMM in Iron Banner as well, as it's a bit of an event that draws people in groups, plus winning isn't generally critical to making progress in IB related quests and bounties. If it were up to me, I'd switch Trials to CBMM as well. Whatever card-based system they have going right now, it clearly isn't working as intended (I saw a post on Reddit a while back saying that Trials matchmaking appeared to be pitting teams against each other based on how many matches into their card they were, regardless of wins or losses, but whatever).

There could then be other playlists that feature SBMM. Maybe the dedicated Control and Clash playlists. This is tricky too, as SBMM might be tougher to implement properly as team sizes get larger. I have no idea what to do with the competitive playlists (Elimination and Freelance Elimination). I think Bungie needs to decide of our comp ranking is supposed to be a tool with which to sort players and create matches between equally skilled opponents, or if it is supposed to be a ladder that we strive to climb on our way to a goal. Because right now it is kinda presented as both but doesn't really succeed in either way.